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Another Staged Act Is What Cuba Calls “Elections”
By Roger Rubio Lima

Roger Rubio Lima, independent journalist and member of the Christian Liberation Movement. (Directorio)

Roger Rubio Lima, independent journalist and member of the Christian Liberation Movement. (Directorio)

The Cuban government is preparing another staged act. It is one of those fantasies that drive millions of people to participate in an enormous lie that they call “elections”. With a simplified realism as it’s scenery, the actors, critics, and spectators will all be played by the same people: citizens 16 years of age or older, or better said, with the right to vote. They will participate in a moment of suffrage that they will not comprehend because of nearly 50 years of civic ‘darkness’, of brainwashing citizens into a communist ideology and of an civil illiteracy that has converted people into citizens of a country that has no real nor ‘apparent’ democracy.

 

According to the current electoral law, the candidates for representative at the Municipal Assemblies of the Popular Power are nominated by the electors in public assemblies at the corresponding district. However, the candidates for representative at the Provincial Assemblies and the candidates for member of the National Assembly of the Popular Power, are nominated by each Municipal Assembly of the Popular Power and take into consideration only those proposed by the National and Provincial Candidates Committee. The electors, according to the current law, do not participate directly in the nominations of these candidates. For example, if a certain municipality has the right to choose from five members to the National Assembly to the Popular Power, on the electoral ballot they will only see five candidates, and so choose one, some, all, or none of those five. The electors cannot participate in choosing those five (from a greater number of candidates) that the population will choose from. In the elections for representative to the Municipal Assembly, the electors from each district are chosen by each elector voting for only one representative: who he/she chooses among many who aspire to represent that district.

 

Like I mentioned before, there exists only one candidate for each position, per district, at both the national and provincial levels. Therefore, there will be as many candidates running for representative in each municipality, one per district, as open positions. If choosing, according to the ‘Real Academia Española’ dictionary, is having preference over someone for a specific purpose, and at the same time, it is have that preference over various other choices of candidates, then one cannot speak of real elections in Cuba. In Cuba, the electors do not choose those who will speak for them as candidates for representative for the provincial assemblies, or for the candidates for representative at the national assembly of the Popular Power.

 

The only thing electors really do is ratify (or not) the decision already made by the Candidates Committee, and this ratification does not alter the result at the end of the process. Therefore, what the government calls “elections” is really just a stage play with the purpose of giving a monarchy  the absolute appearance of a republic.

 

 

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